Jade Dealers Know Their Fortunes
Have Only the Shakiest Foundation

By

Karen Mazurkewich

Updated March 30, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

YANGON, Myanmar -- Admirers call it "heaven's stone," but you have to go through hell to get a piece of it.

To enter the Myanma Gems Emporium -- a large, modern compound in the sleepy capital, buyers must walk past barriers of razor wire, undergo a body search, pass through a metal detector and two bag checks policed by gun-toting soldiers. The gems on sale, still in the form of uncut boulders, have been ripped from mines in...